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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26527444">The World for Once, in Perfect Harmony</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/SegaBarrett/pseuds/SegaBarrett'>SegaBarrett</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Todd and Michaela [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Breaking Bad, How to Get Away with Murder, Orange is the New Black</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Backstory, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-09-18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-09-18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 05:14:35</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>4,038</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26527444</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/SegaBarrett/pseuds/SegaBarrett</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Three kids, a friendship, hope, hopelessness and a journey.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Todd and Michaela [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1928920</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>The World for Once, in Perfect Harmony</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Disclaimer: I don't own Breaking Bad, How to Get Away with Murder, or Orange is the New Black.</p><p>TW: Implied child abuse, neglect, and racism.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“We just have to make sure that nobody sees us,” Michaela declares as they stand off to the side of the big movie theater. “I mean, look at all these people. We just need to act like we’re going in with one of these big families.” </p><p>Todd blinks upward, silently, letting the marquee settle in his brain. Then he nods. </p><p>They slip through the door and make a beeline for the theater. A security guard grabs Michaela’s arm before they’re a third of the way there. </p><p>“What do you think you’re doing?” the blonde guard snaps. “You got a ticket, little girl?” </p><p>He only notices Todd a second later, and that’s all it takes. </p><p>“She’s helping me find my mom,” Todd chirps, and flashes something across his face he can’t name, “She was in line for popcorn but now she’s gone.” The guard releases Michaela’s arm and mumbles something, and somehow Todd manages to grab a bucket of popcorn in the next few moments and then they’re there. </p><p>*** </p><p>“So why’s he so sad?” Todd hisses in a rather obvious whisper. </p><p>“Cause his dad died, and now Simba thinks he killed him,” Michaela whispers back. </p><p>“Oh,” Todd replies, and eats more of his popcorn. </p><p>***</p><p>There’s a junkyard about a mile from where they live, and this is where they recite, adapt and play the movie over and over again. </p><p>Michaela is usually Scar by her own insistence, and also Timon. Todd ends up as Simba and Pumbaa in turn. Sometimes another local girl, Tiffany, a tiny brown-haired girl around eight, plays with them too, and usually insists that she be Nala, despite not having actually seen the thing. </p><p>Michaela justifies this, as Nala doesn’t have all that big a part. </p><p>*** </p><p>One day, the three find a car in the junkyard that, to their surprise, still runs. Someone, in their haste or otherwise, left the keys inside. </p><p>“Be prepared for the coup of the century...” Michaela, the only one of the three who knows what “coup” means, sings as she fiddles with the keys and then exclaims, “Todd! You should learn to drive!” </p><p>“Yeah,” Tiffany echoes, “Let’s teach Todd to drive.” </p><p>It all sounds a lot easier when they say it like that, so Michaela shifts to the passenger seat and Tiffany climbs in the back, while Todd grabs the gear shift. </p><p>“Okay so, you want to put it in, Uh, drive. That’s what they always do. Then hit the gas.” </p><p>“Hey, yeah! Gun it!” Tiffany exclaims. </p><p>They make it around the pile of trash twice before a junkyard dog runs out and gives chase - they hop out and the girls cringe as it collided with a big, oblong scrap of metal and then they all take off running. </p><p>*** </p><p>“I don’t want to be Zazu,” Michaela is saying as the three sit on a rock bench in the park outside town. “He’s a servant.” </p><p>“He’s a major-domo,” Tiffany corrects. “And I’ll play him. Zazu kicks ass.” </p><p>“That’s like a Butler,” Michaela replies, “I already have my so called family treating me like a servant...” </p><p>“You should be like, screw that, we can all run away and like, live on the road,” Tiffany suggests. “We could all do it.” She pokes Todd. “We’re gonna live on the road. Then we can get rich and we can have our own major domos.” </p><p>“Yeah, I guess I could get used to having a butler,” Michaela admits. </p><p>“I just want a housekeeper,” Todd says. </p><p>***</p><p>It doesn’t seem odd to them that they spend all of their time outside; that they never go into each other’s houses the way kids always seem to be doing on TV. <br/>Michaela never admits that there’s a wistful feeling whenever she watches Sam climbing in Clarissa’s window on Clarissa Explains It All.</p><p>Back when the TV still got Nickelodeon, that is.</p><p>She wishes that she had the ability to let a friend in, to show him (or her) around her house. But there’s no need, because she’s damn sure that Todd’s house looks just like hers; that it’s full of cigarette stains and ripped up carpet that will never be replaced.</p><p>So instead they find other places. </p><p>They stay away from the junkyard for a while after the car incident, and they make their way to a park outside of town. There’s a little playground at the edge of it; a tire swing and a slide made out of plastic with a little section they can run along. It’s beginning to fall into disrepair, but so is everything.</p><p>The highlight is the creek that runs behind the playground, and the pond adjacent to it. It’s like another word back there, far from the trailers and the falling down houses. It’s a creek, but they like to think of it as a stream, a flowing stream, the kind that Simba and Nala were at during “Can You Feel the Love Tonight”.</p><p>They’re able to shut off the outside world; the yelling, the unfairness of it all, the way that it seems everything is operating at a different pace for other people that they see but don’t know. The people who for life is good; the kinds of people who they saw at the movie theater, walking in groups and families and crowding into minivans. Another kind of people.</p><p>The three of them come up with games and stories. Michaela is a princess sometimes, other times a warrior. A few times, she is on the run from a killer and Todd and Tiffany are the only ones who can figure out how to defeat him.</p><p>They can identify guppies and catfish in the pond – Tiffany is the one who knows their names. </p><p>If they walk down the path through the woods, past the creek, they can peek through the gate at the kids in the local swim club. </p><p>Sometimes they just watch them play.</p><p>***</p><p>Michaela is pretty sure that she’s in the fourth grade, though she has been in a few different schools and is dropped off there so rarely that she wouldn’t stake a claim on it.</p><p>She reads faster than the other kids. She knows more answers on the tests. Her papers are meticulously written in perfect handwriting, well and above the page requirements.</p><p>They come back with C’s circled in a bright, angry red.</p><p>***</p><p>Michaela is out in the backyard when she hears it. The low, panic sound of screaming. Of terror.</p><p>She isn’t sure what makes her run towards it instead of away from it.</p><p>It’s coming from Todd’s house, which she has always called “Todd’s house” since she can’t recall ever talking to Todd’s mom, a woman with limp blonde hair and a face that was probably pretty once but is now simply tired, tear-streaked and covered in half-healed black eyes.</p><p>Todd’s house has a tiny door that leads into the basement. They have sat next to it before, peeking through at the crawl space which would run between Todd’s house and Michaela’s if you knocked down one of the crumbling walls. It’s easy to get the broken latch open and, a moment later, she slips through the window and down on to the washing machine.</p><p>“Todd,” Michaela hisses. “Where are you?”</p><p>She needs to hope that she finds him and not his mother or one of her boyfriends, or this will end badly. But things have ended badly for Michaela on such a regular basis that the thought doesn’t really phase her much.</p><p>She doesn’t stop searching until she finds him on the broken recliner in the living room. The TV is on, playing Wheel of Fortune.</p><p>There is blood everywhere.</p><p>Michaela remembers how on the TV they always say you shouldn’t move an injured person, but there doesn’t seem to be any other option – when she picks up the phone in the kitchen, she quickly determines it is not only off the hook but the cord is ripped from the wall. </p><p>Next to the phone is a tiny black address book that, when she flips it open, contains only one phone number and an address in New Mexico. The notation next to it is only “Jack”, no last name.</p><p>***</p><p>“So who’s Jack?”</p><p>Todd slowly toddles behind her. The only place she can think to go for help is Tiffany’s – she lives at the end of the block with her mother and a cascade of brothers and sisters that Michaela can’t remember the names of.</p><p>“My uncle. He came to visit once.” Todd’s voice hitches between the words, and Michaela confronts her options. Once she arrives at Tiffany’s, she can call the police.</p><p>But the police were the ones who took her from the side of her dead mother at the age of two and placed her into a new, fresh hell, and never checked on her again.  </p><p>So when Todd asks, “Where are we going, Michaela?”, Michaela tells him, “We’re going to your uncle’s house.”</p><p>***</p><p>Tiffany’s eyes are bloodshot and she’s still rubbing them when she joins their little party, and she’s still dressed in a pair of pajamas streaked with dirt across the collar. </p><p>“I don’t think they’ll notice I’m gone ‘til the morning,” she tells them. “But we should probably get back before then.” When Michaela shows her the book, she blinks at it and asks, “What’s that say?”</p><p>“It’s an address in New Mexico.”</p><p>“We’re goin’ to Mexico?” Tiffany begins, excited, “But I don’t even speak Mexican.”</p><p>“NEW Mexico, Tiff. It’s a state. In this country.” Michaela is about to ask if they’re teaching her anything in school, then recalls the look on her teacher’s face at Michaela’s curly-q’d paper about Julian Bond, the way she had shoved it back into Michaela’s hand with a C- written across it. This one had looked particularly dagger-ish.</p><p>So she doesn’t ask.</p><p>“So uh, how far away is this New Mexico?” Tiffany asks. Todd is quiet behind them, too quiet, and Michaela keeps looking back at him in fear that he’ll collapse. Collapse and die. <br/>She does have the touch, after all. They sure made sure she knew that. (n We rescued you from a shack, Micky, and don’t you ever forget it. Don’t you ever forget to be grateful to your Mama.”)</p><p>“Todd?” Michaela calls, not responding to Tiffany yet because she really doesn’t know how far, other than far. Maybe too far. </p><p>“Uh huh?” he replies.</p><p>“You okay?” she calls back.</p><p>He looks at her with an eye full of blood and an unsteady gait and nods.</p><p>***</p><p>They used to get to the junkyard, before the car incident scared them off, by hopping over rocks when the water in the marsh is low. </p><p>Today the water is high – it stormed yesterday, Michaela remembers. But it’s the only way to get to the junkyard, so that’s the way they’re going to go – how they’re going to get back out once they get on the car remains to be seen.</p><p>“So, yeah, that’s water,” Tiffany announces. “You got any great ideas, Michaela?”</p><p>“Well, clearly we need some kind of a boat, don’t we?” Michaela inquires. </p><p>“Yeah, lemme just grab one right out my pocket here,” Tiffany grumbles. “I don’t know why we’re out here anyway. Why don’t we just call 911?”</p><p>“On what phone?” Michaela fires back. “Trishelle didn’t pay the damn bill. Did your mom?”</p><p>Tiffany shakes her head.</p><p>“We ain’t even had a phone since Uncle Robbie got drunk and threw it out the window.”</p><p>“So there we have it. We need to make a boat and we go to this Jack guy.”</p><p>“In New Mexico. And you’re going to drive there.”</p><p>“We’re going to drive there.” Michaela fixes her eyes on a series of 2 x 4 planks that had been nailed together. “Perfect.”</p><p>***</p><p>“This looked like way easier in Oregon Trail, Michaela.”</p><p>“Keep poling, Tiffany,” Michaela instructs. “We’re almost there.” Another swipe of the metal pole into the water, another shove forward.</p><p>Todd, at the back, is dead weight.</p><p>Tiffany’s eyes are blinking, narrowed. Michaela has seen her stare at a page of The Nose Book for ten minutes and not be able to read a word, but she seems to have a natural knack for navigation.</p><p>They hit the bank and clamor off. </p><p>Michaela wonders if the man who owns the junkyard decided to invest in some dogs, like in the movies – some pitbulls, or maybe a pack of rottweilers. Maybe it was their last misadventure with the car that did it. Or maybe, just that – he moved the car and tossed the keys. It would be enough.</p><p>And then she light glimmers off the bumper of the car and Michaela’s not sure who she thanks exactly but they all climb in and she leans down to kiss the steering wheel. </p><p>She turns the keys and hears it putter to life and she looks back at Todd.</p><p>“Are you okay back there?” she asks, and he nods. He hasn’t spoken yet, has he? Or have his words just been swallowed by the night. Every second he gets closer – closer to what, Michaela doesn’t know.</p><p>And she doesn’t want to find out.</p><p>***</p><p>Michaela is so tired that she doesn’t even remember how exactly she gets the car off the lot. She’s heard that grow-ups can drive in a way that they turn off everything and simply are able to drive, and when she looks back on this moment years later, she believes it to be so.</p><p>She hasn’t consider just how far Albuquerque, New Mexico actually is, and as she drives down the road she tries not to think about what they will do if one of the three needs food, water or a bathroom before they get there.</p><p>She starts to second-guess her entire plan, besides – maybe she should have asked someone. It seems that adults are always able to go vast distances in the blink of an eye, but she also remembers how Trishelle has actually bragged about never having left the state.</p><p>“How much longer, Michaela?” Tiffany asks, leaning against the dashboard, her tiny body beginning to droop. </p><p>“Tiff, you have to stay up, because you have to be the one to read the map,” Michaela reminds her. “I can’t drive and read the map at the same time.”</p><p>Tiffany flips the map around and over, before saying, “Well, uh, I can’t read the map at all. How much farther ‘til we get to Mexico?”</p><p>“It’s New Mexico, Tiff. It’s like… it’s a state, not a whole other country. Todd, how are you back there?”</p><p>The boy in the backseat says not a word, and Michaela fiddles with the mirror with sweaty fingers to make sure Todd is still back there, that she hasn’t left him behind with her sleep-addled brain.</p><p>He is there, but he’s staring silently, his eyes filling the mirror with a dazed look on them; Michaela could see for the first time their tint of brown and hazel. </p><p>She wonders if he will ever talk again.</p><p>“Hey, you know what we should do, guys?” she inquires, trying to fill her body with confidence that she has never felt in her life, and the bulbs of which had always been burnt out before blooming long ago. “We should listen to some music!”</p><p>She hopes that the radio will actually work and, further, that it gets something that isn’t country (though she thinks Tiffany wouldn’t particularly complain if that was what they had to listen to). </p><p>She turns the dial to the right with a click. There’s plenty of country stations, as she suspected, and a few preachers announcing, “you must be watched in the blood of Jesus”. Then, she settles on a bright, soulful voice.</p><p>
  <i>“Don’t go chasing waterfalls,<br/>Please stick to the rivers and the lakes that you’re used to…<br/>I know that you’re gonna have it your way or nothing at all,<br/>But I think you’re moving too fast.”</i>
</p><p>There are waterfalls ahead, Michaela thinks to herself, and she hopes she’ll be able to chase them – for Todd’s sake, at least. </p><p>***</p><p>The junker runs out of gas in the town of Tyler, Texas. It had been sputtering for a few miles before that, but Michaela refused to accept it. She knows that where the gas ends, maybe the time runs out for all of them, too.</p><p>Because how is she supposed to buy gas with no money, and how is she supposed to make it to New Mexico with no car?</p><p>The three sit in the car, and Michaela presses her head against the steering wheel. She always thought that she would have a plan for everything, a way to get out of the edge of any maze. But she’s only ten, after all. Maybe it was always too much.</p><p>Her head sticks up when she hears a knock at the door, and sees a man looking through the window at her. She jumps, then lets out a little gasp, wondering where she should hide. Tiffany is awake now, too, and seems to be darting around with the same urgency. But there’s nowhere to go.</p><p>Todd, as before, is silent.</p><p>“I’m just… I’m not doing anything,” Michaela stammers, and the man blinks and looks back at her, gesturing for her to roll down the window. She hesitated, then slowly did, pulling back a little from the glass.</p><p>“Could you kids use some help?” the man asked, “Your parents around here anywhere?”</p><p>Michaela looked over at Tiffany, then back at Todd.</p><p>“No. I was just trying to get my friend back to his uncle’s house. It’s a long story. I just… didn’t know what to do.”</p><p>“Where’s his uncle live?”</p><p>Michaela let out a sigh. The jig was up, now, wasn’t it?</p><p>“Albuquerque.”</p><p>“Albuquerque? Kiddo, that’s another few hours down the road. Does his uncle know any of you kids are even coming? What if he ain’t home?”</p><p>“I don’t know,” Michaela says, “I mean, I guess I was just hoping that he was.”</p><p>The man sighs.</p><p>“You kids need a ride to Albuquerque, then?” he asks.</p><p>Michaela and Tiffany exchange looks. She doesn’t really want to get in a car with a stranger, especially a friendly one (it’s always the friendly ones you have to worry about in the videos they show her in school) but there doesn’t seem to be any other option to get Todd to Albuquerque, and this may be the only shot they have.</p><p>“Okay,” she says, then slowly opens the door. Tiffany follows, but Todd doesn’t until they go to the back and usher him out.</p><p>They walk to the man’s van and all climb in the back, and as soon as they do, Michaela’s head drops against the door and she falls soundly asleep.</p><p>***</p><p>When she wakes up, she looks out the window and sees cacti and desert, two things she has never seen before outside of books. This must be New Mexico, and it looks like a place that can’t truly be real.</p><p>“Is this it?” she asks. </p><p>“That’s right. I still don’t know what to do with the two of you once we drop the kid off, but… I’ll make sure you get back home. Hell, this place is far out.”</p><p>After the next turn, there’s a long gate covered in barbed wire and heavy locks.</p><p>“Is this it, kid?” the man asks, worried, reading the address back again.</p><p>“That’s what the book said. I’ll bring him from here,” Michaela said. </p><p>“I’ll wait back here, then.”</p><p>Tiffany hesitates.</p><p>“I’ll stay with him. You’ll really give us a ride back?” </p><p>The man nods.</p><p>“Michaela, I don’t know,” Tiffany presses. “This looks like a jail. This don’t look like no kind of house I ever saw.”</p><p>“I promised I would take him home, Tiff. And that’s what I’m going to do.”</p><p>She steps out of the car and extends her hand to Todd.</p><p>“C’mon, Todd. It’s okay. Don’t be afraid – I’m here, okay?”</p><p>Todd slowly opens the door and steps, one foot after the other.</p><p>Michaela brings her hand up to her face and realizes it’s damp, that all of her is damp still from when she went across the water, scraped and smudged from when she walked through the junkyard. </p><p>Todd steps up to Michaela and clings to her hand. She squeezes it tightly, firmly, like she will never let him go, even though she knows she will have to.</p><p>She looks at the gate and finds a little callbox – another thing she knows from watching TV – that is almost taller than her head but not quite. She gets on her tippy-toes and presses the button.</p><p>“Yeah?” a voice replies. “Whaddya want?”</p><p>Michaela is sure she’s lost her voice, but then she finds it again in the moment and pipes up, “I’m here with, uh, Jack Welker’s nephew. We’ve come a long way.”</p><p>“You said Jack’s nephew? Huh?”</p><p>“That’s what I said,” Michaela replies, sounding confident while shivering in terror underneath. There’s a sound of rustling for a few moments before the voice comes back on.</p><p>“All right. Come through the gate.”</p><p>It opens, and Michaela takes a deep breath and then steps through, with Todd huddled close to her. There’s barbed wire all around, and a little building up ahead.</p><p>From the building, a man in his forties steps out. He’s covered in tattoos of symbols that feel dangerous but don’t aren’t instantly familiar to Michaela.</p><p>“Toddy,” the man says. His step quickens as he moves forward, crouching down. He looks back and forth between the boy and Michaela. “Who… exactly… are you?”</p><p>“Michaela Pratt, sir,” she stammers. “I… Todd was hurt, and I found your address in his mom’s address book and we, uh, came here.” </p><p>“You came all the way here?” the man presses.</p><p>Something tells Michaela not to tell him about the man outside, so she just nods.</p><p>“From Louisiana,” the man continues, and she nods again. “You came all the way here from Louisiana?”</p><p>“Yes, sir,” she replies, and then adds slowly, “I didn’t realize it was quite so far.”</p><p>The man laughs, but looks at her again.</p><p>“Thank you. For bringing Toddy home to me. I’m going to guard him with my life.” He extends his hand and calls, softly, “Toddy. C’mere. I’m your Uncle Jack. I’m not going to let anybody hurt you, okay?”</p><p>Todd hesitates, moving a little closer but still clinging to Michaela. </p><p>And then he says the first thing he’s said in hours, “I want Michaela to stay.”</p><p>Jack looks at her, and seems to consider it a moment, then shakes his head.</p><p>“We can’t do that.”</p><p>“Why not?” Todd asks.</p><p>“It’s complicated. I’ll tell you one day.”</p><p>“Hey,” Michaela says softly, gently hugging Todd close, “You are going to be just fine, okay? And whenever you hear one of our songs, you’ll think of me.” Then she sings, quietly, <i>“Can you feel the love tonight… the peace the evening brings…”</i></p><p>And Todd quietly sings back, <i>“The world for once, in perfect harmony…”</i> Or at least it’s probably supposed to be that; his voice is so low and muffled, it’s hard to tell. </p><p>Michaela slowly pulls back and says firmly, “Be strong. You’ll be strong, okay?”</p><p>Finally, he lets go and moves to the strange man, shuffling by his leg. </p><p>“Goodbye, Todd.”</p><p>“Goodbye, Michaela.”</p><p>Jack looks at her.</p><p>“You have a way back? To Louisiana? I’m sure we could…” He looks back, a bit reluctantly, “Figure something out.”</p><p>“I’ll be fine,” she says, then forces a smile, “I always am.” </p><p>***</p><p>Todd, twenty-one years old, sits in the clubhouse as Jesse cooks meth in the lab. He tosses a few Doritos into his mouth and sighs.</p><p>He picks up the remote. No one else is around – the place is deserted for the weekend yet again. They’re all out on that boat.</p><p>Going past a few gameshows, he finds the news.</p><p>“Counsel for the accused, Michaela Pratt…” he hears, and he stops.</p><p>The name isn’t quite there in his memory, but a song is.</p><p>
  <i>“Can you feel the love tonight…”</i>
</p><p>And he wonders what would happen if he took Jesse, right now, and fled to find Michaela, wherever she was.</p><p>It’s what she had done for him.</p>
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